TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Apr 29, 2025

Death row inmate Oscar Smith, who is scheduled to be executed on May 22 after a three-year hiatus in executions, has declined to choose the method of his execution. The Nashville Banner reports that Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry has confirmed that by default, Smith will die by lethal injection rather than electrocution. Smith previously was scheduled to be executed on April 21, 2022, but that was called off a little more than an hour beforehand when problems with the execution procedures were revealed. The state has now shifted from a three-drug cocktail to a one-drug protocol using barbiturate pentobarbital. Read more in a newsletter from the paper.